The State Farm Research & Development Center employs approximately 90 interns in its facility on the U of I campus. Our presentation will give an overview of two of the functions; the actuarial research function and the MAGNet function.

The Actuarial & Predictive Analytics Functions of the State Farm Research and Development Center (RDC) focus on four objectives: providing meaningful research and development for the organization, intern development, collaboration on research and analytic efforts, and recruiting strong candidates to the organization.

Central to these objectives is developing skills that allow interns to become successful analytic professionals. We will present a high level look at State Farm’s undergraduate and graduate programs for developing well rounded analytic professionals in the areas of analytic training, statistical programming and development, leadership training and technical presentation, as well as an overview of what advanced analytic problem solving looks like for full-time State Farm associates.

11:00 AM: Reinsurance Pricing Application in SAS

(Presenters: Blake Konrardy – State Farm Insurance)

State Farm interns at the Research and Development Center on the U of I campus have partnered with the SAS institute to test functionality of a new SAS statistical procedure called PROC SEVERITY. This procedure was integrated into past and current work on loss distribution modeling and reinsurance pricing. Blake will discuss the underlying methodology of a reinsurance project that includes the following steps; data extraction and transformation, loss development of current claims, trending, distributional modeling and loss simulation. Particular attention will be paid to spliced and finite mixture modeling techniques in SAS.

SAS is used in virtually all sectors of the US economy. SAS professionals are always in demand, the work is interesting and the disciplines SAS is used in are always evolving to better solve the business problems companies’ face as they strive to be successful. This presentation will provide an overview of the programs and initiatives available to students through SAS. Helping students succeed in their academic and career pursuits is the focus of SAS Student Programs. Opportunities for students to learn SAS, use SAS to conduct research, get certified, attend SAS conferences and showcase their work and network with industry professionals will be presented.

2:00 PM: Economic Capital Model in SAS

(Presenters: Alan Kessler and Carol Frigo – State Farm Insurance)

Interns at the Research and Development Center on the U of I campus are responsible for investigating new methods and techniques used to build Economic Capital Models. Alan Kessler has lead teams over the past several semesters building ARIMA models, distribution models and simulations processes to support that work. Carol and Alan will discuss his recent work on this topic which was presented in an exhibition at the SAS analytics conference 2012 in Las Vegas.